Complicated Girl (Baker Street Romance #2)(13)
Author: Mimi Strong

I suck in air, gasping with excitement. “You’d do that for me?”

“It’s an option.”

“Hold that thought. I’ll let you know.” My hand starts moving around to help me talk, the way it usually does after some wine. “My first problem is he doesn’t have a last name. Not one that I know, anyway. My second problem, which is why I’m drinking tonight—my glass is empty by the way—is that the silly high priestess of the self-help group has banished us from dating each other, because she thinks we have problems.”

Tina splashes my wine glass with the remainder of the wine. “Do you mean the lady who’s the licensed therapist? I thought you said she was brilliant and incisive.”

“She kissed her own client, though. It’s not fair! The kissing coach thing was before she got her therapist license, but still. Not fair.” I turn and stare into Luca’s handsome face, framed by his golden blond hair. “Why does everyone else get to be blond?”

“You’ve had a rough day,” Luca says.

I whimper drunkenly.

“You should probably take your therapist’s advice,” Tina says. “This guy sounds like trouble.”

“I disagree,” Luca says, his eyebrows dancing as he enjoys the playful angry look Tina gives him for disagreeing. “Fate put this guy in your path for a reason. Fate will lead you to the trough, but it can’t make you drink. I know I’m mixing metaphors here, but meeting him won’t mean anything if you don’t take a chance.”

“Weird. You sound exactly like him. He was talking about chaos and stuff.”

Luca looks interested, so I tell him as much as I can remember from the evening’s interactions, plus everything that went down the previous week at the group. He produces another bottle of wine as if by magic, and we talk for the next few hours.

Tina takes advantage of our distraction, and hogs up all the good spots on the Scrabble board, scoring double what Luca and I had together.

They finally kick me out around three, and I hit my seafoam green sheets with a smile on my face. I have everything figured out, and I know exactly how I’m going to solve the Drew situation.

Chapter 10

On Wednesday, I wake up with a pinot grigio headache. Like the white wine I imbibed the night before, it’s an elegant, dainty headache with a crisp aftertaste.

Muffin stomps across the bed, his white socks hammering on the duvet like elephant feet. He lowers his whiskered face to my chin and batters me like a rutting mountain goat until I finally get up and feed him.

I have a vague recollection of talking about Drew last night, and figuring out what I was going to do with my attraction to him.

Here’s my big plan: I’m going to play hard to get, for once in my life. It’s definitely going to drive him mad with desire! We’ll both keep going to the self-help group, then once we get his mystery problem resolved—say, in a month or two, maybe three—then I’ll finally agree to a date. The tension will be OFF THE CHARTS BY THEN!

(Ugh, why am I yelling in my head? My poor pinot grigio headache.)

I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, but the autumn sun is shining, the leaves are turning a gorgeous red in the garden, and I have a pretty good feeling about Drew.

Maybe I’ll go looking at engagement rings today, just to be ready. I’ll take Luca. We’ve gone shopping together before, and he’s fun. He wanted to buy Tina something when they started dating, so I helped him pick out a bracelet and some charms. I let him take full credit for being perfect.

He didn’t seem so perfect during the summer, when those two dunderheads were broken up for a bit. It was good for Tina to do some housekeeping, literally and metaphorically, but I’m so glad they finally got back together a few weeks ago. If they hadn’t sorted it out, Rory and I were going to secretly buy them “winning” tickets to a resort package and force them to stay in the same room.

I should call Rory. She’s always been closer to Tina than to me, but we’re good friends. I bet she’s having a tough time adjusting to Tina being with Luca all the time. I’m okay, because I can hang out with both of them as a couple, like I did last night.

That Luca is a bad influence, though. He kept forcing me to drink more wine last night. I don’t know if I can keep up with his partying ways.

Rory can’t hang out with the both of them, because intimacy scares her. If they kissed in front of her, she’d probably barf. She’s squeamish about certain words, and heaven forbid you make a rude joke and grab your crotch like a rock star. I did that once, and she didn’t talk to me for a week.

The three of us girls were at lunch last month and I made the mistake of mentioning menstrual cramps. She put down her fork and wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone.

I love the girl, but she needs some serious help.

Or not.

She seems happy enough with her catering job and her life. This might be my elegant headache talking, or lingering drunkenness, but I’m seeing things in a new light today. Maybe we’re all perfectly fine in our own unique ways, and it’s the rest of the world that’s always trying to sell us crap we don’t need, like therapy, self-help books, and those blow-up exercise balls. Nobody needs those, yet they exist.

You know what else exists for no good reason?

Those clear lids that fit on the top of a Pringles can. As if! As if anyone ever opens one of those bad boys and puts the lid on to keep the chips “fresh” for “later.”

Also, butt implants are a real thing that exists.

Interesting how so many useless things are all made of plastic… hmmm.

Chapter 11

Friday! Friday! It’s time for the radio station to play the same annoying songs about Friday!

I walk into O’Flannagan’s pub and scan the place for my date.

Funny thing about O’Flannagan’s: because of the typeface they used for the sign out front, the F and the lowercase L sit too close together and look like an H. As a result, half the neighborhood thinks the place is called O’Hannagan’s. I swear to God that half the staff answer the phone wrong as well. Even the current owners, the Jackson family, aren’t entirely sure what it’s supposed to be. They got the phone company to list the pub under both names, though I don’t know why anyone needs to phone a pub.

Here’s me, phoning: “Hey, do you have pinot grigio?”

O’Flannagan’s / O’Hannagan’s: “We’re a pub, you dunderhead. Why are you phoning? This isn’t a flower shop.”